Certain animations not recording
It seems i made a rookie error with this, everything else i was animating in object mode, and i was going into edit mode to set up my pivot points to rotate my top pieces and rotating them there, instead of going back to object mode to move them. This resulted in the pieces being in the fully open position from frame 1 to finish instead of opening during the animation. So if anybody stumbles on this question with the same problem, then note...ALWAYS animate in object mode.